


an exercise in faith

by domesticatedantelope (vaultie_glass)



Series: power couple [7]
Category: Ride or Die (Visual Novel)
Genre: Asphyxiation, Choking, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-11-02 08:14:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20680154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaultie_glass/pseuds/domesticatedantelope
Summary: The one about faith; or, the one where Colt is well-acquainted with a belt.





	an exercise in faith

Colt has never considered himself a believer.

He relies too much on calculation, choice and action, chess moves in potentia: three, five, ten steps ahead. Fate and faith have little place among the concrete and mundane when he learns from experience, from plunging terrified into the dark, sea salt and stinging skin and fighting tooth and nail against the tides. Anything beyond that is hopeful at best, and foolish at worst, and in the interest of all things _within _the realm of possibility - he’ll take his chances.

And then there is _Mercedes_, named after saints, after salvation. Nineteen years of life without the need for any gods or promises to guide his path, and then he stumbles into Mercy and abruptly every freckle set against her blushing cheekbones feels like something holy all its own. He’s not exactly one to pray, but given such an altar he has learned to supplicate; there is no shame in kneeling when true heaven lies before him.

If faith is knowing beyond any shadow of a doubt, then she holds his in its entirety. 

She holds his hopes, his heart, the only home that he has left; his lifelines run the valley of her palm, where the stiff black leather of his belt fits neatly in her fist. When her fingers curl and pull taut, cinching the weight of tension in against his pulse, his breath is hers to hold as well. 

The pressure cleaves into his breathing, leaves him grasping at the barest sips of oxygen; he drinks and drinks and still he craves, and craving turns to hunger, turns to heat clawing its way out from his aching lungs and scorching every muscle. The grip he’s fastened at her hips begins to twitch. His vision throbs, and numbness slowly takes him, washes out the course of Mercy’s breathing and the distant bassline of an r&b song, swallowed up under the frantic double-beat his heart batters against his ribs and echoes in his ears.

His world is shrinking, caged and strangled, evanescing into empty void and nothing nothing _nothing_, like the darkness between heartbeats, everything he’s worked so hard to take and make his own removed entirely from his control, and _oh my god_ oh _fuck _it’s - 

Perfect.

Relief. Surrender.

_Mercy_.

Her lips nudge kisses at his cheekbones and his parting mouth, where she can track the slow tide of his breathing. She murmurs low, honeyed approval, soft fingers teasing through his hair, his belt still secured firmly in her fist and leashing every breath he struggles to drag past it. Dazed, he hangs suspended in that weightless headspace and lets all the little wounds he’s worn into himself slowly bleed out. 

_Brute force therapy._ Her words, the first time, awed and shaken after watching him completely shatter under her grip. Between the soothing tiptoes of her lips against his skin: _You don’t have to break to feel good, querido. _

_Not breaking_, gasped into her fingers, kissing, pleading, thanking all at once. _Not with you._

She cannot break what she makes whole, not then and certainly not now, when her body is backlit by rods of sunlight slanting through the blinds, outlined in everlasting glow as if the world is gold around her, and he knows with the conviction of believers Mercy is the closest he will ever see to god.

She tips her mouth against his, lazily unfurling two fingers of pressure. “You okay?”

Breath surges to fill his lungs, just enough to set his head spinning and stoke the scorching in his chest, hot flickers of a yearning so urgent it burns. His senses trickle back in fragments, dense block words he lacks the voice to form. He offers her a sluggish nod instead, thrilling at the limits of his movement when she has him under her palm.

“Mmn. Good.” Mercy pins him with a pleased look, licks her fingertips and drops them to the stiff jut of his cock, humming when he gasps and tenses in response. “_Pobrecito_,” she sighs, pressing her lips in messy kisses to his face, his clenching jaw, the bare stretch of his throat above the belt as her fingers tease him with the lightest touches. He feels her palm, the soft pad of her thumb, her fingers closing in for one slow, lazy stroke.

His hips buck against her, fucking into her hand, chasing that too brief glimpse of reprieve. Hushing him under her breath, Mercy tightens her hold around his belt, tugging until he stills beneath her. “Easy,” she soothes him, in the softest snowfall tone. “You work too hard.”

“Hah -” Almost laughter. _Brat_. 

And in the same thought: _God, I love her. _

She smiles as if she can lift the words right from his mind; if she were able, he would let her read him start to finish. “Love you, too, baby.” When she wraps him in her grip once more, her fingers move with purpose, curling tight around him, and he _tries_, but there is just no fighting down the whimper of relief that climbs his throat. Every muscle thrums with frenzied energy, tensing against his frayed restraint. He grits his teeth and clings with slipping fingers to the heady numbness that still pulses in his brain, some small center of calm among the storm. 

She hums a thoughtful sound, considering. The flush of want colors her cheekbones, eyes lidded and dark and warm with longing. There are fewer finer things to see in life than Mercy at the waning limits of her patience. “I’ve been thinking about you all day,” she breathes, whispered like a woman at confession, soft enough to ache somewhere among the chambers of his heart. 

Colt swallows hard, throat cramped behind the leather of his belt. If he only had the breath, he would spell out every fantasy that wanders through his thoughts, the countless forms of worship he would happily perform with Mercy to affirm his prayers. Instead, he weaves a shaking hand into her hair, feeling the silk of it against his fingers, and his heart swells when she leans into his touch.

“I _should _make you wait…” She breathes the sweetest laugh, dropping kisses to the palm of his hand. Something shifts in her expression, sinful and indulgent, all the reckless bliss of giving in. “But I kinda want you right now.”

Every atom of his being pleads with _yes_. Mercy must read it on his face, because her fingers soften to the barest touch, velvet murmurs of _I love you_ pressed against his skin before she lifts her hips and sinks herself so slowly down around him. He swears that he hears church hymns in his head, some perfect harmony that borders the divine as she slips lower, lower, liquid fire lighting up his nerves, and Mercy whimpers out the softest squeak when their hips find that perfect fit together.

“Oh,” she moans, and “_Fuck_,” he mouths, and both their voices fall apart at the first clumsy circle of her hips. His words have all unraveled past the border of articulation; he can only comprehend in pleasure and sensation, _heat, wet, tight,_ the tantalizing panic of constriction when her fingers curl once more around the tail end of his belt.

“Oh,” she says again. “Oh, _god_. Okay.” She wets her lips, locking the echo of a moan behind her teeth. Struggle twitches in her features, glimmers of impatience to the angle of her mouth, and it thrills him to no end that even when she has him at her mercy, he can test the limits of that finely regimented focus. Her palm rests trembling over his heart, and she waits to feel his chest expand with breath before she squeezes down around his throat once more. 

The belt loops in with little hesitation, riding to the brink of where his limits lie but never crossing. She tempers her grip until he can just _barely _breathe, and it’s like blindly reaching out into the dark, like needing and not having, wanting, falling short. His fingertips exalt the softness of her skin, her thighs, her hips, whatever parts of her that he can find beneath his touch while Mercy whines and starts to rock against him, coaxing him over that perfect point inside of her. 

Pressure pounds like battle drums between his ears, but he fights through it, thrusting up to meet each languid shift of her hips as his lungs begin to tingle. He knows his limits, knows her strength, knows he can afford to get a little reckless with the last of his remaining breath, and tugs her down around his cock as deep as she will take him, eyes rolling at the blinding heat and all the frantic noises that spill from her lips. 

Mercy curses, filthy words that never grace her tongue and _oh _he loves that he can fuck them out of her, the points of her nails biting at his shoulders as they rock together. The kisses that she sets against his mouth are far too urgent to be kind, but he wants every part of her, the softness and those little claws and all the stinging lines they score over his body. 

With his neck so thoroughly restrained, he can only search his fingers blindly down the soft flat of her stomach, seeking a clumsy path across her skin. Mercy gasps and arches when his touch settles between her thighs, teasing at the slick, sweet point where they connect. “Baby-!” And there is almost outrage in the word, like she might call the heavens down upon him for daring to make her come first, but the utter bliss of watching her unravel is well worth eternal damnation.

“Please,” he pants, an offering in breath when he has little to begin with. She’s close enough that he can stretch to kiss the warm flush in her cheeks. “Please.”

She tilts to kiss him fully, cradling his face against her palm as she allows herself to melt under his touch. The faithful need to pray; this is the body where he lays his fears and fleeting dreams, and he will see her properly exalted, will press his love and his devotion into every touch until she can see heaven too.

From the hitching in her voice, it won’t be long now. Her arm curls tight around his shoulders, clinging there like she might drift away without his hands to anchor her. She sobs his name and broken pleas and faltered invocations, hips clenching with tension as she rides into his touch. When she unravels, he can feel her _everywhere_, nails and thighs and teeth biting a scream into his skin, and that devastating heat between her legs squeezing so perfectly around him. He thrusts into the feeling, verging on delirious, gripping Mercy tight with cramping knuckles as his body rages, close, _so close_, if she would only -

Mercy lets go, and the belt releases, breath flooding his starving lungs in an exhilarating rush of air and _finally _he comes. Pleasure spirals out and fries his nerves with scalding bliss, and for a moment he is almost fearful he will never be the same, that every breath will carry some small echo of this ecstasy. Stained glass colors glitter in his vision, sound and sight all rushing back too fast to fully comprehend. A broken groan rips through his voice and saps the very last remnants of energy from his weak muscles, and he collapses back against his seat with a wounded shudder.

Her fingers are still shaking when she fumbles to free him from his belt. He keeps a hiss of relief firmly trapped behind his teeth, blinking bleary eyes when she tuts over him with soothing noises. An otherworldly warmth glows in her skin, that angel’s light of hers still shining through, lips showering his face with kisses as he tries to catch his breath. “Baby. Are you okay?”

“I‘m fine,” Colt rumbles, laughing, gathering her hands against his lips to kiss her fingers. “Honestly, I’m fucking fantastic.”

The worry eases from her features, and she allows herself the smallest smile, triumphant and yet somehow still so shy, even with his cock sticky between her thighs. Her mouth trails with the utmost softness down his throat, gentle where she has been so rough. She soothes her nails over his scalp, the sharp points sending shivers of warm bliss down his spine. “Mmmn. We should get clean.”

His limbs all ache in protest at the mere idea of moving. But he thinks of Mercy in the shower, her skin steam-kissed and bronze against white tiles, her body that most holiest of forms. He’s left a filthy mess of both of them, but there is something spiritual, too, in washing her clean, and after all she’s offered him, it seems the least that he can do.

If only as a show of good faith.


End file.
